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I know TicTacs happen on Thursday so this doesn't have to be set in stone, but I know Fridays can be difficult to sort out with people who have lives etc. This is mainly putting the feelers out to see what people think so we can change the date if needbe.

So yeah, here we are again! First of all, thanks to everyone that attended the last time. It was fun to do and I appreciate you giving up playtime for this daft project. I should stress that most of the issues I'll be outlining below are entirely my fault and things I need to improve on.

Sorry it's taken so long to get to this point but the very rough edit that I'm about to share of the last session will explain somewhat. I was a bit embarrassed that after all the hard graft everyone put into helping me make it I was only able to make something that doesn't really hang together at all. In the meantime I've been doing pretty much anything other than thinking about how to make it better, which is why recently I went as far as reviewing a 10 year old mod for HL2 on my youtube channel to get out of taking responsibility for it.

Anyway, this is the super rough cut of what we got at the moment. I've synced it as best I could to the original idea / music and I'll try to explain problems and what we can possibly do to improve things next time.

Yep, that's it. Sorry! It's unlisted so only we should see it. Here's my thoughts on what we can bear in mind for next time;

Recording - I didn't realise til after how big a deal consistency of footage would be but it would improve things next time. I record in 720p even though natively I run a different aspect ratio. So my desktop is in 1440x900 but I have planetside 2 at 720p. I'd need anyone planning to record their own stuff to do the same ideally, I was able to crop CMaster and Wombats stuff before but it lagged Vegas out quite a lot and made things more difficult. Also, I'd want a low FOV setting to avoid the fisheye effect, I noticed that in a few of Cmasters panning shots. The actual shots themselves were awesome so just keep doing what you're doing apart from that!

Composition - We had a lot of shots of things coming towards the camera and some of them going away. I'd like to get a bit more diversity in this area, perhaps some aerial shots and a bit more chase cam / POV of harasser.

Action - The recruitment video made me realise how awesome jumps are. More jumps for the win.

Sound - I had to abandon the idea of having the ingame sounds mainly because there wasn't an efficient way to remove the comms that came up on Cmasters shots. It may be better to do this anyway as it's easier but I'd like to know what you guys think about that and whether we can make it work. Also, having watched the footage of this versus the bombastic recruitment thing we did with similar techniques I'm not convinced I can pull off my original song choice. I'm tempted to switch to the always dependable Woodkid with this little gem; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmc21V-zBq0 Again, your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Organisation - Cmaster suggested that instead of shooting in chronological order, we should start with the scenes that require the most people and work from there. This was also proven to work well with the recruitment video, where some of our best stuff came from the smaller numbers who had gotten used to working together at the end of the night. We also won't end up with a repeat of poor bastards standing around for three hours.

Day/Night Cycles - What you saw above was a mess of day turning to night and back again, and that was the best I could do with what I had. I don't know if it's the subtle changes on esamir where you don't even realise it's turned to night or if that could have happened anywhere. Either way, we'll either need to be strict about when we shoot things or just shoot such a volume of stuff that it doesn't matter.

Structure - I toyed with this before but bearing the above in mind it may be cool to spread the video over the three continents. Because obviously the video is too ambitious so the solution is make it more ambitious! I think it gives us more options though, if Esamir gets taken like last time we can just go to a less populous continent and film what we can there until the dynamics change. I'd split the action evenly through each place, so if we did use woodkid it would amount to about a minute of each.

Who's who - A couple of times it was difficult to tell who was who, especially since the lumbifier had a visual range. Perhaps a distinctive camo for the lead vehicle too? Perhaps the start should have a different couple of vehicles chasing the harasser? I dunno. Give me your thoughts.

I'm sure there was a bunch of other stuff but we'll see who is available before discussing more. Thanks!

Last edited by jaguar skills; 16-07-2013 at 10:28 PM.

My old sig didn't meet with the community guidelines. This one does but isn't anywhere near as interesting to read.

Yeah, the music is kinda lacking the "punch" to go with the activity in the shots.

My shots will be clean of comms next time. However, I don't think I can record in 24FPS. I think thats where the weird glitches in my videos were coming from. So it will be down to vegas to ressample from 30 FPS (or I could try 48fps, but after the last GU that seems ambitious).

It's certainly not really an issue for me to run in windowed 720P for the sake of filiming. I often like the effect I can get with selective cropping however.

You've got some great shots and composition there over all, but I'm really not sure about the "twitchy" shots - I notice already there are less of them than in that "test" video you had before.

I'm going to go do some experiments now re: "helicopter" camera. Might give us some space for some more extended shots, which I feel are needed a little.

Edit: Liberator with Shredder + 2x scope looks like one of the cheaper and more flexible options. At 2x, all weapon dissapears, and as much as the lib "belly" field of view is very odd, you get a lot of possible angles.

With the Drake (default lib/galaxy tail) you never get rid of a little bit of gun either top (lib) or bottom (gal). Could be cropped out by running at taller res possibly. Didn't bother looking at walker or anything, they all take up more screen space.

EDIT: While I don't want to provoke a rash of suggestions, there is one thing I noticed. I'd say to find a different way of showing the NC guys getting into the harasser. The disappearing when they're 5 feet away from the car makes sense to us because we play the game and see that all the time, but doesn't look great on video. Maybe a cut to the lights turning on from the front at a low angle, cop movie car chase style? Gives a little more panache for not very much effort.

EDITEDIT: How do we stop outdoing the Imperial Stormtroopers in terms of shoddy accuracy, without actually killing the vehicles?

ha, yeah ... the shooty bit was a bit painful to watch. maybe this could be less awkward if the spai harasser would have a chassis/turbo and could boost away repeatedly with the VS harassers trying to chase. you could even get more jumps that way.

'Run Boy Run'! I love the song idea, and because of the general feel of the beat I think some of the shots could line up nicely with it.
Though naturally, I would imagine a bunch of shots of a guy running would also be quite suitable .

As far as organisation, ill leave that up to you, but ill try and join in with more of the next one (but give less silly ideas).

My only other comments would be:

-Is there a way to film a scene without needing to make it look like people get in a car, because disappearing people is odd!

-From the video, its quite obvious to see that the guy shooting was actively trying to miss, which is a little distracting :P

Argh making me choose between StratGir and Filming is already hard enough. But with the MLG stuff happening, there is no way i can make it. Have to focus on that for this Thursday and Friday.

I told you jumps are awesome, i kept showing you tentative jumps everywhere . Also explain why lead harasser can keep his lead. Bummed that the only one we did can't be seen.

It lacks a proper introduction of the chase vehicles, we should have made a closer shot to see they were setting up an ambush.

About the music, might i suggest you just scratch your original idea, and adapt the music to the footage rather than the other way around? Use several musics to fit with the footage rather than had another constraint of fitting the footage to the music? With art videos it was "easy" to fit, not so much with a scenario

Have you seen the film Smokey and the Bandit? Lots of shots, sequences you could steal from that. For example, one or both of the chase harrasers gets destroyed; cut to road block with two vanu 'cops' lazily on guard (eating donuts); lead harraser zooms past; cops jump into their harrasers and give chase. That would also give more explosions and solve the stormtrooper accuracy issue.

Also could consider having the NC dude on the back of the harraser drop a mine for the pursuing vehicles to run over. And/or random c4 being detonated by the roadside just for utter 'expendables' style over the top action. Ooh, and perhaps a thermal imahing lib tracking from far away like in those traffic crime documentaries.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away with ideas there! It's looking really promising and I agree that run boy run would be a good choice. Not so sure about the story working in three different biomes.

I feel it would be easy to cut together a comedy-style shot of harassers driving in and out of a base chasing one another, a la every comedy chase scene ever. Just fix the camera and drive a load of 1-man harassers in and out of the chosen base.

*snippety*Ooh, and perhaps a thermal imahing lib tracking from far away like in those traffic crime documentaries.

Infantry NV scope is the one to use to make it look like that, but it wouldn't be as 'chase-like' unless you could find a suitably elevated position where it looks like it actually is an aircraft. It's a good thought though.

I'm not too keen on changing continents. It already felt jaring during the RPS recruitment video.

To better convey the story, you could add some "?" "!" or skulls and bones. If you keep if for the opening sequences, it wouldn't be distract from the serious chase. But it still might be too cartoonish for your tastes

I forgot to mention last night but the beginning was a problem for me too. My latest solution is to give in and actually go for some exposition. Originally it was going to be more po-faced but I think maybe we could play it for laughs. An establishing shot of the vehicle inside a garage as we hear a guard talking to his boss on the radio about how yes hes being careful and no nc will get near it because theyre dumb. Cut to a shot side on to the building with close up of the guard. Hes facing away from the building arguing away with his superior while we see two nc running into the building behind. We can have the car drive off in the same shot then the game sounds go away as the music kicks in.
Do we have anyone into the performing arts whod like to do VO for that?

My old sig didn't meet with the community guidelines. This one does but isn't anywhere near as interesting to read.

I forgot to mention last night but the beginning was a problem for me too. My latest solution is to give in and actually go for some exposition. Originally it was going to be more po-faced but I think maybe we could play it for laughs. An establishing shot of the vehicle inside a garage as we hear a guard talking to his boss on the radio about how yes hes being careful and no nc will get near it because theyre dumb. Cut to a shot side on to the building with close up of the guard. Hes facing away from the building arguing away with his superior while we see two nc running into the building behind. We can have the car drive off in the same shot then the game sounds go away as the music kicks in.
Do we have anyone into the performing arts whod like to do VO for that?

I don't mind having a stab at the VO. No guarantees, but I'd be happy to try (probably best to get a few people to see whose voice works best).

Suggestion: You could have two VS guys hiding behind the harasser, and have the pair of NCs run up behind it out of sight. VS get in, start engines. Cut to a different angle while the NC guys move out of shot, then show the harasser driving out of the garage and splattering the VS guard in the process. Saves having the slightly awkward uniform-stealing scene.

We will then do one or more of these days depending on who is available. To be honest even im thinking of trying the mlg thing so probably didnt think this through. Like last time when I madeI it the same day as a TTT.

My old sig didn't meet with the community guidelines. This one does but isn't anywhere near as interesting to read.

Sorry about the resolution, for some reason I got it in my head fraps half size would be 720p Will be sorted for next time.

General thoughts.

A) The light changes aren't too jarring. So long as you show sunset or dawn, you can get away with it.

B) There needs to be some way of explaining why the harasser hasn't been blown to bits after the first minute or so, 2 suggestions:

Film a harasser being blown up, but then edit in another shot of the harasser coming through the other side of the explosion unscathed. Showing that its special and a lot tougher than normal.

Try an work out how to get a shot of a bullet/rocket/missile bouncing off some how, from a close up view. Could possibly do it just with normal shots that do actually do damage, but have a sound effect, *plink* *plink* *plink*.

C) It is very obvious I'm aiming to miss in that shot. But then we didn't set up to film from that POV, I think we can do better knowing that we are going to be filming that view (I just captured it cos I happening to be gunning that time). We need to hit occasionally though, but if we do too much they should be exploding too. Perhaps if you decide to go with VO then how about having the driver moaning at the gunner about his bad aim. Or we rotate in different harassers after some get blown up.

D) Perhaps have the lead harasser in a snow camo? Chasers in VS or giraffe, of vice versa.

D) Some driver, in car shots might be good. Also shots of the turbo, tires spinning, that sort of stuff. Looked OK in the tests I did, but needs setting up properly with a decent camera man .

Does Harassers get fire-extinguishers? Could be a snazzy little effect of having the lead harasser take some fire and fooosh back to good health and speed off. Also I think the chase scenes could do with afterburners for more action shots, especially when they get to flat ground. Like have the chase around the canyon and when they get to open ground have them speed off. Especially the super harasser, which could help explain how it survives for so long.

Have someone stood on top of a gal with whatever scope you desire (NV, zoom, sniper). Could give some cool effects and (with careful walking at the speed of the galaxy) might allow tracking shots.

Usually with those kinds of shows, the scope is zoomed in far enough so that the only way you know that the chopper is moving is by how long the tracking shot goes on for. If you kept this version to short shots with a little bit of scope movement, you can fake it fairly well with some cutaways I can imagine. That said, the NV scope has crosshairs, but that could lend a cool 'calling in a drone strike' angle to the proceedings. Add some C4 along the route to blow up strategically, and swerve the lead car onto a ramping rock and you have one awesome shot. Just need whoever is looking though the NV scope to call out the timing on the detonation.

I'll stop idea-farming now. It's a habit of mine.
Availability, I can do Thursday, but not Friday and possibly Saturday. I do have a LARP on Saturday, so I might be a little late getting on, but I can do it.